In the Bathroom
by Ananke Adrasteia
Summary: Draco Malfoy and Moaning Myrtle meet in the Prefects' bathroom.
1. In the Bathroom

_This story has been originally written for the Sugar Quill, and betaed there by the absolutely wonderful and patient Suburban House Elf._

_I do not own Harry Potter. Definitely. And am not getting any money out of this fic. All right? _

---

"_Colloportus!"_

The first person in his life to preach the virtue of constant vigilance had been his fourth-year Defence teacher – the memory still smarted. Father later told him that the man hadn't really been the Auror, but a Death Eater escaped from Azkaban, and that the incident had been really due to the man's hatred for those of Voldemort's cohorts who had avoided the prison, and, by extension, their families – but he couldn't really present _that_ as an argument, could he? Of course, at the time, he had ignored the old man's ramblings, they had seemed of no use to him – but circumstances changed. _His_ circumstances changed. The _family's_ circumstances changed. And so, he couldn't really ignore Aunt Bellatrix's teachings, even if he had wanted to – and he hadn't. She taught him a lot.

She taught him how to stay in control of his own mind, and how to keep up the proper appearances. He was surprised that she would know that, of all things; she had never shown the slightest inclination to follow her own advice in this matter since she had returned – but then again, obviously, there was no need for her to hide her true convictions. She taught him how to keep up appearances – and also, because she knew that however willing, he was but a novice to the fine arts of misdirection – she taught him what to do when he could keep up the appearances no more. And her first lesson was – to make sure that he was alone if he found he had to relax his guard. _Completely_ alone. Keeping up the appearances in public wouldn't be for him simply a matter of dignity; it would be a matter of survival.

And so, it was only now, after the door to the prefects' bathroom closed with the peculiar noise that accompanied the spell, and after he cast the other spells to reinforce the fastening, and made sure that the mermaid of the portrait would not wake up, and that no one outside the bathroom would hear any unusual noise, that he could loosen the control he now held over his thoughts and feelings. It almost became second nature to him now. He didn't really usually have to concentrate to keep his mental shields up – but after what happened today–

----

She was watching the boy curiously from her vantage point near the ceiling. She guessed easily what the poor thing was doing – she remembered how she herself used to escape to the bathroom whenever Olive Hornby felt like teasing her about her glasses, or her face, or her looks in general – this was, after all, the reason she died. But she paid Olive back for her taunts – oh yes, she _did_.

The boy was now sitting on the edge of a bath, his back turned against her, his shoulders sagged. She wondered for a moment why someone would bully him – he wasn't really ugly, and didn't wear glasses. Of course, he wasn't as handsome as the one that so frequently visited her bathroom a couple years ago, the one she later met right here, in this bathroom – but he wasn't ugly, either. But then, she decided, he didn't have to be; people didn't really have to have a reason to bully you. If it wasn't glasses, then it was something else. They always found a reason.

She drifted for a moment, undecided whether to leave the boy to himself – whether to talk to him; he clearly did not want anyone to see him in his state, after all, and perhaps she should just return to her own bathroom. Nobody ever talked to her in this wretch of a school when she was alive – oh, they teased her and laughed at her, but nobody ever talked to her. And sometimes, when she was in the bathroom, crying, she felt that what she really would like would be to talk to someone. To a friend. Could she and the boy become friends? Perhaps she could help him; she could haunt whoever was bullying him. That would be even fun.

But boys were different than girls. They didn't cry, and if they did, they didn't want to be seen crying. This one –

And then, she heard it: muffled sobs, coming from the figure hunched at the edge of the bath; and amongst the sobs, a word. That decided the matter.

----

He was lucky, he supposed, that the Gryffindor did not die. If she had, there would be a full-scale investigation launched, and one of the Aurors would probably eventually wise up to the Imperius Curse Mulciber cast on Rosmerta. And the clerk would be questioned about the necklace. And the money would be traced to its source in the Malfoy vault. And, in the end, everything would point to him. And he didn't yet have Father's influence in the Ministry to hush things up.

As it was, the rumours would probably calm down after a few days, and the investigation would never be launched; while he had the perfect alibi of serving McGonagall's detention. Still, it was a close cut. He should not repeat such mistakes.

Of course, the reason why he had committed the error still remained. He had managed to repair the Cabinet easily – but he was having trouble with restoring the magic previously cast on it. He was becoming desperate, and his was the blunder of a desperate man. This would not happen again. He would fix the Cabinet, and conclude his mission – he certainly didn't need Snape's help in this – because otherwise –

– _otherwise_ –

Then, through tears, he saw the ghost of an incredibly ugly, fat girl in very thick glasses float down from the ceiling.

"Hello?" she said.

----

The boy's face tensed into a mask the moment he noticed her, even before she spoke; and for a moment, she wondered if she had done the right thing. But she had already started – and, anyway, if things went really wrong, she could just leave. There wasn't much he could do to her now. She was already dead, after all.

"What are you and what do you think you are doing here?" the boy asked. He was on his feet now, his wand pointed at her. He now looked completely different than before – his whole body was tense and taut, coiled like a snake ready to spring at its victim. She somehow felt that the only reason he hadn't hexed her yet was because he didn't quite know what hex to use on a ghost.

"I'm not a what, you know. I'm Myrtle and –"

He interrupted her, quite rudely – she was liking him less and less by the minute. "Myrtle? Oh, so you are – _Moaning – _Myrtle… I've heard Pansy and the others talk about you. Say –" he smirked, then continued on in a lazy drawl – "did anyone, by chance, ever tell you that you are fat, ugly, miserable and pimply for someone who is actually dead?"

The tears flew out of their own accord, as they always did. "You just think you're so original, don't you? Fat – and ugly! Dead – and miserable! Well, _I_ wasn't the miserable one here, the one moping here just a moment ago! And here – here I thought you were actually different! I thought you were nice! And sensitive! But you aren't! You aaaareeeen't!" The tears weren't merely flowing anymore – they were gushing in a torrent.

"Nice?" The boy crooked his head slightly, as though he couldn't believe the stupidity of what he had just heard. "Whatever gave you the idea that I was – nice? And –" he sneered – "sensitive?"

"Well," she said, blinking in a hopeless effort to stop the flow of tears, "you were here, crying, weren't you? You must have felt hurt, someone must have hurt you. And you were thinking about your mother–"

"My mother?" The boy's eyes narrowed. "What do you know about my mother?"

"Nothing… Only – only – that you said "mother" when you were crying. You must really love her, don't you?" The tears were, miraculously, drying up.

"That is a matter between my mother and me. You would do well to keep your ghastly nose out of it." There was a hint of menace in the boy's voice, but the taunt appeared half-hearted, at best, especially when compared to the previous broadside. She drifted around him to the edge of the bath and seated herself as best as she could – it was quite hard to keep concentrated enough not to pass through the thing.

"I will – if you want. But can't she help you?"

"Help me?" It was obvious that the question startled him. He also moved in the meantime, so that he was facing her again; but at least, she noted, his wand was down.

"Yes – against the people who're bullying you and making you come here and –" she finished, not sure of how to end the sentence, at last settling for a vague, all-encompassing move of the hand – "do these things? I mean –" her thoughts were gaining impetus again – "my mother couldn't, but perhaps yours can? Can't you write to her or something?"

He laughed mirthlessly. "I rather think she believes she already had."

"Oh." That rather killed the idea. Then, remembering her previous scheme, she perked up. "Perhaps I can help?"

"You?" He eyed her incredulously. "And what could _you_ do?"

"Haunt them. It worked on Olive Hornby, you know."

The boy was visibly amused. He dropped next to her on the edge of the bath, and said, "I'm afraid it wouldn't work in this case. Although if you could haunt Potter –"

This time, it was her turn to be surprised. "Potter?"

"Oh, you _must_ know him. _Everybody_ knows Harry Saint Potter, Dumbledore's pet and the celebrity of Hogwarts. Green eyes, black hair, hideous scar on his forehead – oh no, I bet you are one of those fluffy-headed idiots who are completely smitten with him –"

"I'm NOT smitten with him!" she declared, the emphasis in her voice due in no small part to the fact that she was actually trying to convince two people about this. But she didn't want to disappoint the boy – she could not remember when was the last time she actually had such a long, civil conversation with anyone – especially anyone living. She was happy to know that her initial feelings about the boy were correct. He really was nice. Of course, he did insult her – but he was feeling bad at the time. She could understand this.

And, anyway, Harry Potter didn't deserve her good opinion. "I know who he is. But I don't like him. He isn't nice at all! He and those friends of his once occupied my bathroom for a month, making some stinking potion on a toilet. And then, he left, and didn't even come to visit, only to get that book, and then to ask me how I died, but that was just because he wanted to play hero and save that redhead. And two years ago, I met him here by chance, and I helped him, and he promised me that he would come and see me, but he never did." The words were flowing out of their own accord, just as effortlessly as the tears that had flown before. "No, I don't like him at all!"

She could see that the boy was somewhat confounded by her tale. "Stinking potion?" he asked cautiously at last, when he could finally be sure that she had finished.

"Yes. I couldn't get the smell of it out of the bathroom for months!"

"Do you know – what it was called? What it did?"

"Oh, I know that very well, I was there when it happened," she said; it was easily the most amusing thing she had seen in years. "He and that freckled boorish friend of his just changed their appearance, they looked like two other boys. But that girl that was with them – she got changed into a cat! Not completely, which was even funnier – she just grew a tail and cat's ears – and she had fur on her face – and her eyes grew yellow – oh, she looked dreadful, really. Dreadful. Served her right for laughing at _my_ looks behind my back," she concluded darkly.

----

As the ghost concluded her chaotic story, he couldn't help but smirk. So, Granger messed with the Polyjuice Potion and got partly turned into a cat for her efforts! Oh, if he had only known it at the time – but what time was that, precisely? He raked his memories, trying to find some period of comparable peace from her insufferable toadying to the teachers, but he could not. Second year, perhaps? He was rather excited then with the possibility that Snape could well become the Headmaster – and so, perhaps, he let pass by such prime mocking material. Just his luck – he had to become transfigured to a ferret on the eyes of the whole school, while the Mudblood got turned into some sort of a – a ridiculous human cat, from the sound of it, and still managed to avoid notice. And yet – he consoled himself – he may well have trouble repairing the complicated magic of the Cabinet, but at least he knew to be sure whose hair he gave to Crabbe and Goyle.

Some of his feelings must have shown on his face, because the ghost shuffled her feet, and coyly asked, "Are you feeling better now?"

"Yes, I am," he answered to placate her. To think that in all these years, he had been unaware of such prime source of incriminating information on Potter!

"That's good," she continued, in the same small voice.

"It is," he answered brusquely – what did she expect, gratitude? He rose. "And now, I must go. Otherwise someone will start to think that I was hexed on the corridors – or something."

"Oh." Her face contorted, and for a second he was afraid that she would start crying again. But she managed to overcome the tears – from what he had heard, a rare feat for her – although there was a palpable trace of a sniffle in her voice as she asked, "But we will see each other again? You know where my bathroom is? You will always be welcome there."

What a ridiculous invitation. And yet, he would be glad to hear something more of that story of how Granger turned into a cat – and who knew what else the ghost had seen in this school? Perhaps one day, when he felt bored, he would drop by. He did his best to hide the disgust he felt, and smiled. In his most proper voice, he said:

"Of course we will see each other again. Thank you for the invitation, I will certainly come. I'm not like Potter, you know –"

He finished, almost to himself, "No, most certainly I am not."

----

She watched him unmake the spells he had cast on the bathroom's door; it was only when he cast the last spell that she realised that throughout the whole conversation, she didn't manage to learn the boy's name. But – name or no name, she knew that – this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

"_Alohomora!"_


	2. In the Darkness

He was bored.

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber were in Snape's detention again – ostensibly to help them improve their Defence marks; he almost smiled at _that_ – try as he might, Snape wouldn't drag any information out of those who simply knew nothing. Pansy and the girls had disappeared into their dormitory – as far as he could tell, to try on some new clothes Pansy's mother had sent her with the morning post. Zabini was off to somewhere, most probably to another meeting of that ridiculous Slug Club thing – how anyone could say _this_ without laughing was beyond him – and Nott... was Nott. The seventh-years were apparently having some very important tests within the next few days, and everyone was busy studying and comparing notes – Snape had made clear at the beginning of the year that he expected the Slytherin students to obtain only Os and Es in the NEWTs. (Theoretically, he would hold no power over them once they passed the NEWTs – but no student was particularly willing to test that theory. They still remembered Flint.) That left Bastis, Millicent's cat, as his only companion – and even she was now occupying herself with bringing her gleaming black fur to perfection.

His work was going well – indeed, he expected everything to be over by Christmas – and, given the detention, he had decided that he well deserved an evening off, to catch up with his neglected social responsibilities. It was just his luck that this was the one evening when everyone else was busy with their own matters. Usually, he had difficulty getting himself rid of Pansy and her cohorts, or some of his Quidditch team mates who apparently believed that if they pestered him enough, they would convince him to return to the team. And, if everything else failed, there were still the piles of homework to do. Today, even that disappointed.

He was bored, indeed.

Suddenly he rose to his feet, quickly enough to capture the attention of the cat lying in front of the fireplace. By the time she returned to her chore, feigning disinterest in what had happened the moment before, he was gone.

----

The bathroom was, as he recalled, on the first floor of the castle. He covered the distance from the Slytherin dungeon quickly, not willing to get himself caught – detentions were, if anything, a dreadful nuisance. Once he opened the door, ignoring the out-of-order sign, and saw the inside of the place – _filthy_ was decidedly an understatement – he almost turned back. Really, what did Filch think he was being paid for?

Against his better judgment, he entered the dim, damp room, taking care to close the door behind; his steps resounded eerily against the walls of the room as he walked from stall to stall, trying to find the ghost. By the time he had gotten to the last one, he was sure she wasn't in the bathroom; she would undoubtedly have heard him, otherwise. Evidently, she had decided to float, drift, fly, or whatever what it was she was doing, to somewhere else as well. Even she was acting up on him that day –

Giving vent to his anger, he kicked the pipes under the nearest sink. As though she were a genie rising from a bottle in response to its owner's call, the ghost emerged from the outlet of the sink beside it.

"Careful with that one," she said, gesturing at the sink he had just kicked, "it opens." Then, she added, curiously, "Did I scare you?"

The room became completely dark when the miserable flames of the candle stubs, which had fallen out of their holders when he had knocked them over, finally sputtered into nothingness, extinguished by the water on the floor. He moved his wand, conjuring a small light – he knew that some people in his year still had trouble even with the easiest nonverbal spells, but _he_ was certainly _not_ among those.

Still, he should perhaps owl Borgin and Burke's to see if they still had on sale that old Hand of Glory that Father had refused to buy him a couple of years ago. It would be useful for his nightly forays into the school; and he was almost certain that it would pass Filch's Secrecy Sensors –

"No, not at all," he replied at last, in a deliberately leisured tone. Attempting to change the subject he asked, clutching to the first topic at hand, "It opens? Why? What for?"

He bent to examine the sink more closely. In his attempt to repair the Cabinet, he had read a lot about the Arithmantic theory of spatial spells, and so he knew, more or less, what the telltale signs he should be looking for were.

The ghost, now hovering above the sinks, shrugged. "How should I know?" she said, clearly disinterested. "Nobody ever tells me anything in this school."

She drifted a bit away from him, to the dirty, cracked mirror hanging above the sinks, where she started to play with her hair. "Don't you think this light agrees with me? Makes me more – mature? More of a – a someone to be taken seriously?"

"Not really, it doesn't." It _was_ true that she looked a bit different in the spotlight of the spell, and the deep, sharp shadows it evoked – more ghostly perhaps, in a way – but he quite doubted that anything could make anyone take her seriously. And the utter foolishness of the question irritated him. "Where were you, anyway?"

"Oh. In the prefects' bathroom – I returned here as soon as I heard you calling me –"

His irritation doubled. He turned away from her and crouched to look at the piping below the sink. "In the prefects' bathroom? Trying to catch Potter?"

"He comes there?" she asked, clearly oblivious to the irony. "I've never seen him there – not since the last time, that is, two years ago –"

From underneath the sink, he answered, "Perhaps he's scared to meet you again."

She was clearly fighting tears; even not seeing her, he could tell it by the sound of her voice. "That wasn't nice."

"No, it wasn't," he agreed absent-mindedly, rising to his feet and casting a quick cleaning spell on himself. If there was any opening here, it was very well hidden – the only thing he had managed to find was dirt, and that in quantities even larger than he had expected; the place was definitely not fit for the heir of his family. It was almost a metaphor of all that was wrong with Hogwarts under Dumbledore: a distinct lack of order, to begin with. "Are you sure it opens? How?"

"I don't know," she said dismissively, floating down to his eye level. "The last time, it appeared to involve a lot of hissing."

"Hissing?" This piqued up his interest. "As in – Parseltongue?"

"Parseltongue?" There wasn't the slightest hint of recognition in her voice; and only the slightest one of interest as she asked, "What's that supposed to be?"

"Just how old were you when you died?" Before he had a chance to add that it was a rhetorical question, she replied.

"Fourteen."

"Oh. That explains a lot." Not her lack of knowledge, perhaps; but her lack of restraint, certainly. From what he remembered of Pansy at fourteen years of age, at times he had felt as if he would have had a more sensible conversation with a Janus Thickey ward patient.

"How did you die, exactly? Careless as the teachers here may be," he snorted, remembering the Hippogriff – and the Blast-Ended Skrewts, a memory which, he knew, would still be with him for many years to come – "the majority of the students do nonetheless seem to manage to survive long enough to finish their NEWTs?"

Suddenly, and quite inexplicably, the ghost grew suspicious. She floated to the nearest stall, where she seated herself on the tank of a toilet. Looking at her feet, she asked guardedly, "Why should I tell you?"

Why should she, indeed? Was it, by any chance, that she was her favourite subject of conversation – of course, she was no different in that regard from the majority of people since the beginning of time – _manus manum lavat_, scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, and all that –

No – he wasn't going to allow her to make him beg for her story. It was, admittedly, mildly interesting how someone went about dying at Hogwarts – just not interesting enough; and he didn't know _what_ could be interesting enough. How did he come across the unhappy idea that she could tell him anything worthy of his note in the first place?

He was halfway through dismantling the spells on the door when he recalled something – something that she had told him during their previous meeting, something which he hadn't even known he had remembered, seeing as he had barely paid attention to her words at the time –

He returned to the stall where she was sitting, not-so-quietly sobbing. Not really willing to enter – although, to tell the truth, his robes would already be useless and in need a complete rewash after the night – he asked, "This is about Potter again, isn't it?"

No answer came from inside the stall, but the sobbing seemed to calm down somewhat.

"The last time we met, you told me that he asked you how you died, and then left you behind and went off to save some redhead –"

Suddenly, he realised something which had been nagging him for some time now, ever since he had mentioned Parseltongue – _Potter_ was a Parselmouth! He continued, taking a not-quite wild guess – "_He_ was the one who opened the sink, wasn't he? That's how you know how to do it?"

Again, she said nothing, and he was beginning to wonder if he should perhaps stop wasting his time on the miserable thing – but then, at last, she cautiously nodded.

"Well, for your information – I'm not Potter, whereof I distinctly remember having already notified you; I abhor redheads" – he mentally shuddered: all too often, the word was tantamount to Weasel – "and –" he hesitated for a moment, suddenly aware that the third argument – that he simply wasn't the type to rescue damsels in distress, preferring to live his life in accordance with Salazar Slytherin's finest tenets – wouldn't probably go over well, given the audience – "I don't speak Parseltongue," he finished lamely, annoyed at himself for not having been able to think of something more adequate and less humiliating than admitting to the weakness.

But admitting to it was, apparently, precisely what made the ghost leave her sulk – and just as well, because now that he knew that somehow, the manner of her death had been once important to Potter, he was slowly becoming interested in it himself. The ghost finally stopped crying and asked, tentatively, "So you really only want to know – because – because of me?"

He shrugged casually, letting her form her own, predictably erroneous, opinion. Then, he propped himself against the wall dividing the stalls – he decided to forgo the laundering of the robes, and simply throw them out – Twillfit and Tatting's surely still had his measures.

Unsurprisingly enough, the next moment he found himself treated to what was surely intended to be a dramatised, and came out as utterly ridiculous, account of the event in question.

And as the ghost told her tale, pieces of a riddle several years old – a riddle he had never solved, first because he had been unaware of some very important facts; and then, because when he had learnt the facts, the riddle itself had ceased to be important, so that he had forgotten about it altogether – started to emerge from his memory, and to fit one another at last. Things mentioned in passing by Father and by Aunt Bellatrix; things not mentioned at all, yet obvious, like the loss of Father's seat on the board of governors of the school – and the sudden and unexplained end of the affair of the Chamber of Secrets, conjoined with the equally sudden and unexplained winning of the House Cup by Gryffindor in his second year –

"– and that's how I died!" the ghost finished gleefully.

There were things he would never learn, of course. He would never know how the Dark Lord had managed to open the Chamber for the second time – because it must have been the Chamber (he now understood why Filch was keeping the bathroom in such a dreadful state: on Dumbledore's orders, obviously) – from without the school. He would never know how Potter had closed the Chamber again. But the most important thing he now understood – that it was he, the Dark Lord, the rightful heir of Slytherin, who had first opened the Chamber after the millennial hiatus, and that he intended it to use it against his enemies, as Slytherin himself had –

And the ghost must have been the Dark Lord's victim. Perhaps his first.

"Well, Myrtle –" he said quietly when he broke out of his reverie; half-smiling, putting special emphasis on her name, "– will it console you to know that you have died because you have incurred the wrath of a very powerful wizard, indeed?"

_As has Father._

The thought came unbidden, unwanted, out of its own accord.

He rushed out of the stall and back to the sinks; he felt like vomiting. But then, he saw his own face in the mirror –

_No_.

No. Father had _him_, and _he_ wouldn't fail. He would pay the ransom in blood, in Dumbledore's blood, and he would return the family to the Dark Lord's grace. He would prove himself useful, he would not be useless and in the way, like that fool Diggory, or that pathetic creature behind him – well, come to think of it, Father had mentioned that the first time the Chamber had been opened, some student had been killed – some Mudblood student –

The ghost, beaming with pride at the news, appeared next to him; finally, she noticed his changed expression. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing that could even remotely concern you, Mudblood!"

He left the bathroom and the ghost wailing in it in complete darkness.

----

No one but the cat, still grooming herself in front of the fireplace, took notice of him as he returned to the dungeon.

On the following day, due to a simple yet cardinal mistake, the shattered threads of the spell on the Cabinet that he had been so carefully trying to merge collapsed completely. He was now faced with a task much more difficult than his initial one. He would have to recreate the spell from scratch.


	3. About a Name

When she finally managed to return to the safe haven that her bathroom was – she had been caught unawares when someone had flushed a toilet, and so she had ended up in the lake, _again_ – he was there: the pallid boy who had been so rude to her, in spite of her best attempts to befriend him. The last time they had met, over a week before, he had left the bathroom in a rush; and in his parting words, he had called her a Mudblood.

That, as she understood, was generally considered a grave insult amongst the wizard kin. But she herself had never cared much about it; it wasn't like the insults that really hurt, personal ones, like the ones about how she looked like or what she did. The claim that anyone Muggle-born had dirty blood was just so obviously untrue, so obviously just a thing invented to spite people – she herself had been of Muggle stock, but she knew that she hadn't been any worse a witch for that; and certainly, enough of a witch to have become a ghost. But laughing at her appearance – about how, no matter what she tried, she could never change her looks, because, although there did exist things that made a beautiful girl out of a pretty girl, and a pretty girl out of an average-looking girl, they all gave up when faced with her – well, _face_ – or Metamorphosing just to make fun of her, like what Olive Hornby's friend Janice had used to do – _that_ was just cruel. When she was a small girl, Father used to tell her that the real beauty was the beauty of the soul, and that all the people actually worth knowing knew that – and that only the people who knew that were worth knowing – but Father had never been to Hogwarts. Handsome people had it so much easier here – like that Slytherin prefect, Tom Riddle –

Of all possible insults, the boy had probably chosen the one that had the least potential to hurt her; but he _had_ intended his words as an insult. And now, he had the cheek to come here, to her bathroom – and just when she needed it for herself, after she had to return all the way back from the lake to the school, no less. Not that the intrusion would have been tolerable in any other moment, of course.

She floated up to where he was, curled up in the corner between the last sink and the wall. He must have been really lost in his thoughts, because he didn't notice her for quite a while after she appeared in front of him.

When he finally did notice her, however, she could tell it straight away. His face changed suddenly, almost instantaneously, into the mask-like lack of expression she had seen on him once before, when she had surprised him during their first meeting. The tears on his face didn't dry up immediately, but she guessed that the only reason he didn't vanish them away with a spell was that he would look really conspicuous using his wand to do this; had he been possessed of the faculty of producing such a spell wandlessly, he would not hesitate a moment to cast it.

"What do you want, ghost?" he asked unpleasantly; clearly, he believed that an effective offence was the best defence.

"What are you doing here? This is a girls' bathroom. _My_ bathroom. Please vacate it at once," she said, trying to sound regal. _Vacate_, she thought, was an especially nice touch.

He sneered. "When did this become your private kingdom? Besides –" he added in an afterthought – "I thought I was invited."

"You were –" she forced herself to be calm – it would not do to start crying right now; the tears would have to wait until after she had dealt with the trespasser – "until you started to throw insults at me. Leave, or –" she stammered, unsure of how she could threaten him; but then, suddenly, an idea came to her – "or I'll call Peeves. Your pure-blood friends will be happy to know where you are, I'm sure!"

Apparently, the threat achieved its goal – the boy stood up slowly, and spat out viciously, "Well, then – far be it for me to infringe upon your hospitality."

She watched him as he walked demurely past her on his way to the door, and then as he started to cast some spells, probably to open it – she had already noticed that he was very punctilious on the matter of security.

Even from behind, the boy was a study in misery – his shoulders were sagging, his blond hair was dishevelled and his robe was dirty; there was even a spider's web, along with its clearly surprised inhabitant, trailing after its bottom rim. (The castle's caretaker had come the previous week – of course, only after she had pestered him long enough – and had put new candle stubs in the holders, but hadn't deigned to actually clean the bathroom, claiming that no one ever used it, anyway. She had been deeply hurt by his insensitivity, and had cried for more than two hours after that.)

Nobody, she felt, deserved to be seen this way in this dreadful school. Making the boy leave now, like this, with traces of tears still clear on his face, would be like playing right into the hand of whoever had forced him to hide in the bathroom in the first place. And that was something which she simply wouldn't permit. The boy may not have deserved her friendship, but he did deserve a chance to dry his tears, at least.

She called after him, "No – wait. I'm sorry. Stay – if you want to."

His wand stopped abruptly, mid-spell; several tiny silver sparks shot out of it. Then, he slowly turned around, as if to face her, but he wasn't really looking at her, just somewhere behind her; meanwhile, she was silently cursing herself – not literally, of course; not that it would work anyway – for the unfortunate wording of her statement: just how did it precisely happen that she was the one apologising?

She raised her voice; the opportunity was not lost yet. "But I want you to do something for me in return."

----

He could not predict what the minutiae of the deal he was offered would entail; this irritated him to no end.

"Name?"

"Yes."

"That's what you want? My name?"

"Yes, your name. We've met twice already, and you still haven't introduced yourself. That's bad manners, that is."

She had the audacity to lecture him on the topic of manners. The very thought amazed him.

She smiled brightly and added, "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. I was angry before, but I won't really call Peeves, or tell anyone your name, or that you visit here. All right?"

He wondered what the true reason behind such a rare expression on her face was. For a moment, he considered blackmail as a possible option; indeed, if news of his – moment of weakness – got through to Peeves, and through him, to the rest of the school –

He didn't want to think about this. He was a fool to have started talking with the ghost at all. He had underestimated her, had judged her as mainly harmless. And now she had a hold on him.

But there was no motive; he had nothing that the ghost could want.

Apart from, apparently, at this moment, his name.

He wished that he could make her swear an Unbreakable Vow to compel her to her words, an oath the likes of which Mother had forced on Snape; but there were two major hurdles – firstly, she was already dead, and he wasn't sure how the Vow, if broken, would affect a ghost; secondly and more importantly, there was no Binder. To find one would mean having to reveal the deal to a third party – and he was prepared to do this even less than he was prepared to conclude the deal itself. He frantically raked through his mind in search of any way to bind a ghost with a magical contract – but found none. He wasn't even sure if ghosts were on Hogwarts' curriculum. Inferi were, of course, they would have them this very year in Defence, but ghosts? Perhaps they should have had them one of the previous years –

He could lie to her, of course.

_Or_ –

----

She watched the changing expressions on the boy's face as he was considering her offer; it seemed that he was weighing up her words over and over again. She couldn't understand his hesitation – all she wanted to know was his name, after all; such a simple thing. And she had already promised not to tell anyone, hadn't she?

Apparently, he thought differently. When he finally broke out of his reverie, he asked, sombrely, "Would you swear it on the honour of your House?"

On the honour of her House. She hadn't really thought of her House since she had died. Was she even still its member? Even House ghosts usually referred to their Houses in the past tense –

She decided not to mention her doubts to the boy. It could only bring unnecessary complications. "Of course I would."

"Then promise," he insisted, stepping towards her, looking intently straight into her eyes. She drifted a step back; she didn't want him to walk into her. "Promise that you'll keep it a secret. Our secret."

A secret. When she had been alive, no one had ever asked her to be a part of anything that had required keeping a secret.

She was happy; there was no other word for this. Well, perhaps there was. Delighted, elated, joyful, blissful, exhilarated, exultant –

_Happy_.

"I promise. I promise on the honour of the House of Rowena Ravenclaw that I won't tell anyone who you are, or that you come here. Are – are you satisfied now?"

----

The Death Eaters said that the Dark Lord was so skilled in the arts of Legilimency that he always knew when you were lying to him.

But he himself needed be no Legilimens to see that the ghost wasn't lying when she made her promise, and that she would do her best to keep to it – she clearly took to this childishness of a vow, a vow that he had no means to enforce save by appealing to her _better nature_. It was only pity that she was a Ravenclaw, not a Hufflepuff – they were the ones who actually prided themselves on their _loyalty_ and _devotion to friends_, and would go to any lengths to prove it.

The only risk lay now in the possibility that the ghost would babble something by accident, but that, he had no means to control. Other than that, however, he suspected he could feel now – within reason – relatively – temporarily –

– _safe_?

----

She saw his shoulders relax a bit as the tension seeped away from him. He leaned against a sink, and said, still looking at her, though no longer in her eyes, "Yes, I am. And now that that's behind us – I'm Draco. And you were right: it was a terrible lack of manners not to introduce myself before. But I was – a bit distressed at the time."

She drifted to the toilet seat opposite the sink, and sit in her favourite place, on top of the tank. "Oh, it's all right. But –" she could not rein in her curiosity –_ "Draco?_ Like in the school's motto?"

"Yes." He hissed out rather than said the word.

She understood what he meant. "Oh. Did they try it often? And I bet they were thinking they were oh-so-funny as well."

He laughed a mirthless laugh. "No. Some people tried, in the first year, but Father put an end to it."

"I wish my Father could have done the same for me." She sighed. "Do you know what my very first Potions lesson was about? A boil-curing potion. And do you know what one of the ingredients was? _Myrtle_. Chopped myrtle leaves. There was also dried nettle, porcupine quills, snake's fangs – oh, I remember them all perfectly – but do you know what the last ingredient was?"

----

"Horned slugs," he answered absent-mindedly; he could already see where she was heading. Seeing her surprised expression, he shrugged. "We must have had the same first lesson." He remembered that lesson well – Snape had commended him for having stewed said slugs "acceptably well".

She was nonplussed. "Yes. We must. Anyway –" she continued, regaining her previous impetus – "do you know what my Potions Professor's name was?"

He decided that he might just as well _let_ her have some fun. "No. What?"

"Slughorn," she said, triumphantly. "And someone, of course, found the instruction _"add myrtle to slugs"_ terribly funny, and so it started, from the very first lesson on. And it's not even as if the potion worked. I should know, I've tried," she finished glumly.

Trying to prevent the imminent onset of tears – a small part of his mind noted that, between her initial irritation and later exhilaration, she didn't really warrant her nickname that day – he asked, "So, you didn't like Potions?"

He couldn't really begrudge her if she hadn't, especially with such a teacher. Potions had always been his favourite subject – before Slughorn started to teach it.

"No, I didn't," she sniffled; the tears were bound to start any moment now. "The Professor didn't really care for my work. He didn't really care for anyone's work, except that Hufflepuff's, Corny Fudge's – always said that, with his connections, Corny would one day arrive at a very good post in the Ministry –"

He could very well guess what kind of connections those were. Father even had a special name for Fudge. He used to call him "that useful idiot."

"– But, anyway –" she finished – "your name is really nice."

The sudden turn in the course of her thought surprised him. Shrugging, he answered, "Thanks, I guess." Deciding that he might as well supply some information, he added, "It is a kind of a tradition in my mother's family. Many of us are named after constellations, or stars. There's my aunt Bellatrix, and my other aunt, Andromeda – but then, of course, on the other hand there's my mother, Narcissa –"

"What does she do?"

----

Belatedly, she remembered how sensitive he had been on the matter of his mother. She began to regret her curiosity, when he finally answered, laughing that mirthless laugh again, "Parties, mostly."

Some of her disbelief must have shown on her face, because he added in an explanatory manner – she noted that his usually relaxed speech turned into a yet more languid drawl –

"My mother is the perfect party hostess; a perfect politician's wife, playing her role to a hilt – except that my father, of course, never wanted to become a politician. He just used to – be a consultant for the Ministry." A sudden grimace twisted his face.

"Used to?"

"Used to," he answered firmly, closing the topic. She took the hint, and didn't press the matter further.

A moment passed, as neither of them spoke.

"My mother died in the bombings," she said suddenly, breaking the uneasy silence. "And my father – at the beginning of the war, they shipped him off to some place called Bletchley Park, to work for the government. I died before he returned, really. He was a mathematician – that's sort of Muggle Arithmancy –"

"Arithmancy was my favourite subject, next to Ancient Runes. Of course," she made an unhappy face, "I didn't learn either for long; we only got as far as ogham in Runes, and Sieglinde Steinhaus's Third Rule of Banach spaces –"

----

He drifted off the moment she started droning about her Muggle family, a topic that couldn't be of less interest to him; but the sound of her voice, usually so jarring, was now oddly soothing, in a way – the way that Binns's history lessons usually were. He wondered if it was some odd personality quirk common to ghosts –

But then she said something that caught his attention.

"Can you repeat that?" he asked.

She blinked. "I only said that I only got to Steinhaus's Third Rule in Arithmancy before I died."

"Oh." Steinhaus's Third. _Of course_. That was why the Room of Requirement kept creating fourth-year Arithmancy textbooks every time he had commanded it to help him during the previous week. He had forgotten to account for that infernal rule in the formulae he had employed. _That_ was why he hadn't been able to set the spell on the Cabinet.

"Myrtle, I must go. Now," he said, removing himself from the sink.

She looked at him from her toilet tank, startled by his sudden declaration. "But you will return?" she asked tentatively.

"Sure." He hesitated, "If I'm still invited, that is."

The ghost veritably beamed in return. "Of course you are."

He awaited with disgust the inevitable familiarisation; he was relieved when none came.

----

When he left – having first paid attention to straighten his hair and clean his robes properly (the spider must have departed on his own while they had been talking), she smiled.

"_Draco_," she said, savouring the sound of the word.

She giggled.

Then, someone flushed a toilet somewhere, and she found herself reeling down towards the lake. _Again_.


	4. After the Party

**After The Party**

So.

So, the work would _not_ be finished by Christmas. So, he would _not_ be working today. So, he had gone, just to round things up before Christmas, and had gotten himself caught by Filch and had been forced to lie that he had actually _wanted_ to gatecrash _Slughorn's_ _party_. And to prove it, he had to butter up the old fatso, to suck up to him, to crawl, creep and grovel and flatter him–

And then, he had been scolded by Snape and had snapped out at him like – yes, Snape had been right: like a _child_. He had raised his voice, and had Snape not warned him, he would have probably ended up screaming, out for the entire school to hear.

He _wanted_ to scream. If he were a Gryffindor, he _would_ have screamed – and then, of course, being a Gryffindor, he would have gotten away with it. But he was a Malfoy, a pure-blood and a Slytherin, and it did _not_ become him to scream; it was unfortunate…tasteless… unseemly… ungainly…

Reckless.

Reckless enough that he had already almost screamed out before that night.

No; appearances _would_ be kept.

Appearances were survival.

---

Appearances were survival; but appearances were more, so _much_ more. Tomorrow, appearances would assure that Mother would not know that things were not going well, not as well as they should.

She _would_ know, of course; she always did. But she would _not_ know because he _told_ her. She would not be _certain_; she would have her intuition, which would almost amount to certainty, but she would not _ask_; and he would not tell. He would laugh at her little jokes, and make all the little comments he would be expected to make, and perform all the little rituals of life he was expected to perform; and he would very carefully not tell her anything.

Because, if she knew for sure, she would be upset. And she would go to Snape again. As if, in her urge to protect him, she refused to understand... refused to understand that this was family matter. Snape might wish to steal his glory; or, perhaps, he had to admit, he might not; but, in the end, it all boiled down to this: this was Malfoy matter, Malfoy business. A Malfoy started it, and a Malfoy would finish it, and Snape neither had nor would have anything to do with it.

No. Mother must _not_ know.

In fact, he would much rather _not_ go home for Christmas. He could work during the break; he could work for hours, and would not be interrupted for lessons; and he would be careful, of course, he _would_ avoid Filch.

(And Mother would _not_ see him, would _not_ guess, would _not_ learn, would _not_ know, would _not_ get upset–)

But appearances must be kept, and he must not be seen staying at Hogwarts while he was expected to go home.

(And Mother was alone in the house; or, perhaps, with Aunt Bellatrix for company; and he shuddered as he could not decide which of the two would be worse–)

And so, he _would_ go home for Christmas.

And, once home, he would keep up all the proper appearances.

---

There was Pansy, of course.

Pansy, sweet Pansy who did not know how to Occlude her mind; whose thoughts lay open to all who wished to partake of them, and not in the least for Snape. No. He had promised to himself that he would leave Pansy out of it – that he would leave them, Pansy, and Greg, and Vince, them _all_ out of it.

So, when he would see Pansy again, he would be the way he ought to be; he would talk, and smile, and laugh; and he would very carefully not tell her anything, either.

---

For now, however, he wanted to scream.

Or, failing that, at least to talk.

To talk: to talk without worrying about the world and about those within the world who might be listening; to talk without having to laugh at the little jokes, without making the little comments he was expected to make, without performing all the little rituals of life he was expected to perform; to talk.

He looked around to see if anyone was coming; and then, when he saw that no one was, he crossed the threshold of the bathroom. _Her_ bathroom.

---

"Hello, Myrtle."

She was a small, sad figure sitting sulkily on the tank of the last toilet in the dank, smelly bathroom, with her elbows propped on her knees and her chin resting on her hands. Oddly enough, she was not crying; only sitting there, glumly and miserably, in the nearly complete darkness.

"Oh. It's you, Draco," she replied without the slightest trace of interest in her voice, without even as much as a look in his direction.

(She really _was_ hideous. It did not bother him nearly as much as he had thought it would when she availed herself of his name. But _was_ she _ugly_!)

"I came to talk," he announced, folding his arms in the sleeves of his robe and propping himself against the toilet's door. The charms on the entrance were as strong as he could put up... Although, come to think of it, would a strongly charmed bathroom door not be suspicious in its own way?

Myrtle corrected her ghostly glasses on her ghastly nose, and asked – still not looking at him; still without interest in her voice, "Talk? About what?"

Draco blinked. "What is it with you?" Then, he blinked again. "Today?"

This, at least, did have some effect on the ghost. It infuriated her.

"_What_ is it with _me_?" she asked angrily, "_What_ is it with _me_ that when a pampered pure-blood prince strides into my bathroom and _demands_ to talk to me, I am not happy to serve him at his every beck and call, like some house-elf–" She started to cry loudly.

Draco blinked for a third time.

"If _I_ am a pampered pure-blood prince, then _you_ are muck as mud," he replied coolly. "And I would much rather not return to _that _aspect of our acquaintance. Therefore – shall we start again? What happened?"

A moment later, his thoughts caught up with his words. Had he just...

It was, of course, already too late: Myrtle had taken his throwaway words as an invitation to launch a full-scale offensive of tear-blurred words:

"You _promised_ that you would come! And you didn't! And right now, I bet, you only came here because you want me to tell you things about other students, about Harry Potter, not because you want to talk to _me_! No one _ever_ wants to talk to me! No one ever wants to talk to Myrtle, the fat, ugly, pathetic Moaning Myrtle who's only good for a laugh now or then! Everyone's laughing. Laugh, laugh, laugh… Oh, look, how funny she is! I _hate_ this school!"

The non sequitur was definitely something Draco could identify with. Between Dumbledore's criminal mismanagement of the school and the faculty's blatant favouritism of Potter in particular and the Gryffindors in general (Snape, he had to admit, continued to be the laudable exception in this regard), he too had no warm feelings for Hogwarts.

(He and, to the best of his knowledge, most everyone who wasn't a Gryffindor.)

Therefore, it was completely in earnest and very much with feeling that he replied, "I hate it, too."

Myrtle finally deigned to look at him.

"You do?" she asked suspiciously, her temper tantrum already forgotten, her tears already drying.

"Mhm," Draco replied, "I do. Father–"

He stumbled, but quickly recovered, "Father wanted me to go to Durmstrang. But Mother wouldn't have it."

"Durmstrang?" she asked curiously; and he remembered that, when all was said and done, she _was_ only a Mudblood.

"Another school," he replied noncommittally.

"Oh."

"But you– You don't have to stay here?" he asked suddenly. "Do you?" he added quickly, seeing that Myrtle's face threatened to burst with tears again.

"I _do_. The Ministry – they did something _dreadful_ to me," Myrtle whispered conspiratorially, and Draco had to make himself hide the smile which simply wanted to appear on his face. "And now I can't leave Hogwarts. _Ever_," the ghost finished.

The rituals of society, Draco mused, prepared one little for giving condolences to ghosts on the occasion of learning of their confinement to a building they abhorred. Especially when said ghosts appeared to take pleasure in speaking of the experience.

Therefore, he felt it necessary to resort to the vaguely consoling murmur Mother had taught him precisely for such equivocal circumstances, "That's _terrible_. Why would they do this?"

Myrtle smiled unpleasantly. "Because of Olive Hornby. I told you about Olive, didn't I?"

"The first time we met." And, for some inscrutable reason, he had retained Olive Hornby in his mind.

"You _listened_!" Myrtle was now positively beaming; Draco felt oddly proud of himself. "Anyway, Olive hated me. She followed me, and teased me, and made fun of me... So, when I died–"

"_You_ haunted _her_," Draco laughed. "Served her right, I suppose."

"Yes," Myrtle said; and, for a moment, she seemed almost happy.

That impression passed quickly as she added, "I hated it, you know? Even when I was alive, it was horrible."

It took a moment before he understood what she was talking about. "Hogwarts?"

Myrtle nodded dolefully.

"But, your parents– I mean, couldn't they– Why didn't they–" He interrupted; he simply did not know how to finish.

Myrtle sniffed. "They thought that I would be safer here."

Draco tried to wrap his mind around the alien concept. "Safe? Saf_er_?" At _Hogwarts_? From _what_?"

"From the war, of course," Myrtle replied matter-of-factly.

For a moment, visions of the Dark Lord, of his entourage, of Aunt Bellatrix; of _Fenrir Greyback_, danced in his mind. He forced his mind to shut them down where they belonged; to think logically–

"War?" he repeated, "Grindelwald, you mean?"

The ghost glared at him through narrowed eyes, as though she suspected him of making jokes of her.

"No," she said empathetically, "The _war_. In the _outside_ world."

The _outside_ world, she said, his mind noted. The _outside_ world. Not the Muggle world. As though the wizards were caged, imprisoned in some faux, unreal world–

"I wasn't supposed to come here at all," Myrtle continued in a storytelling voice, obviously oblivious to Draco's distress, "But then, Britain went and signed a pact with..."

She frowned, as though recalling the memory of a lesson learnt long ago – which, Draco suspected, must be precisely the case.

At last, she appeared to have found the remainder of the lesson. "..._Poland_, which said that if Germany attacked Poland, Britain would strike back at Germany within two weeks..."

_A fool of a pact_, Draco decided.

"...And _everyone_ knew that Germany would attack Poland come autumn, at last, so my parents thought that I'd be safer among the wizards, if Britain found itself in war..."

_That was Muggle thinking for you, _Draco thought scornfully.

"...And do you know what the worst part of it was? When Poland was attacked, we didn't do anything. We just broke the pact and didn't do anything. Not until nine months later, when France was attacked. I could have spent a whole _year_ outside this place!"

In Draco's opinion, it was unbelievable: Myrtle genuinely seemed to think that it had all happened to spite _her_.

"And then what happened?" he asked, because it seemed that it was demanded of him.

"And then, Germany attacked _Britain_..."

Typical. If you hesitated too long in choosing the side in a war, your side was chosen for you. Fortunately, he had been cursed with none of that reluctance. And he had chosen the winning side.

"...and my mother died in the bombings..."

She had mentioned this before, he was sure. _Bombings_. Some merry killing version of a Dungbomb, no doubt created by someone sharing the Weasel twins' sense of humour.

"...and my father was busy working for the government, and he still thought that I would be safe here. Because of the bombings. Which ended soon after I started the second year, anyway," Myrtle finished glumly.

For a moment, Draco only watched the ghost. Those idiot Muggles. There had been a war, and they had sent their daughter to Hogwarts for _safety_. But Hogwarts had _never_ been safe, Draco would be the first to testify to that. It didn't even need Dumbledore...

_Dumbledore_, who decided that the post of a Headmaster of the largest school in Britain would be the _perfect_ stand from which to wage his losing crusade against the Dark Lord – probably because it afforded him the perfect opportunity to recruit young fools into his army, no less. Of course, if he became the Minister, he would actually have to _answer_ to somebody, to the press, at least, and not get away with doing nothing to protect those nominally in his care–

Even this year's lauded increased security was really laughable, wasn't it? What was it that Granger said in the library? That it'd be easy to smuggle poison into the school, it's only have to be... hidden... in a bottle... of something... else...

(As in, let's assume for a moment, Rosmerta's beverage of choice, a Christmas present to Dumbledore– Some teacher or other would be sure to buy Dumbledore something of Rosmerta's; and, if not, she might send him a gift from herself– Of course, this would expose the Imperius, but by that time, this would not matter– And, best of all, he would be at home when it would all happen; he, and the rest of students; and nothing would happen to anyone, except for Dumbledore, of course, and possibly some teacher; everyone in the school would be safe, nobody would be hurt because of _him_ again–)

The enchanted coin burned his pocket; he longed to go and do something, and finish the thing, once and for all, and atone for Father's mistake, and restore the family to their rightful place by the Dark Lord's side–

There was a slight sob from the direction of the tank of the toilet.

Draco frantically searched through his thoughts, trying to recall just what precisely Myrtle had been talking about when he had come across this new idea–

_Oh_.

"Look, Myrtle," he started, "I'm not sure if it's any consolation to you... But if you hadn't come to Hogwarts, then you wouldn't have surprised me in that bathroom. And we wouldn't have started to talk. And we wouldn't be having this conversation. And you have helped me very much with this conversation, you know?"

Myrtle perked up, just a bit. "I _have_?" she asked suspiciously.

"Yes, you have. Although now I have to leave again."

Yes, he had to leave; to leave, to work – he had so much work to do that night! And perhaps, just perhaps, if he did things correctly, he'd not even have to return to Hogwarts–

Of course, he thought as he undid the door charms with a fluid, lazy move of his wand, this would mean that he'd probably never see Myrtle again, too.

He looked to the small, sad figure sitting sulkily on the tank of the last toilet in the dank, smelly bathroom, and shrugged. He might as well throw the ghost a farewell bone.

Putting a great deal of care into the detail, he smiled what Pansy considered to be his most charming smile, and said:

"Merry Christmas, Myrtle!"

With some luck, it would be a very merry Christmas, indeed.


	5. Beginning of the Year

**Beginning of the Year**

Pansy, he mused, had the prettiest smile in the world.

Actually, she probably did _not_; but it did not really matter. To _him_, Pansy _had_ the prettiest smile in the world.

Currently, Pansy was quarrelling with Blaise Zabini. "You know how he is about Potter!" she was saying, "If it were you or me – or Draco – he would ignore us. Or even rebuke us for disregarding the task completely!"

"But you have to admit," Zabini argued, "that it was ingenious. I mean, Snape mentioned bezoars on the first lesson ever – and how many of us thought of one?"

"And what if one of those poisons couldn't be cured with a bezoar?" Pansy replied fervently, "You only defend Slughorn because you are in that club of his–"

He couldn't take more.

He circled Pansy's waist and scooped her delicately towards himself. "Pansy, m'dear," he murmured into her ear, "Excuse me to Flitwick, will you?"

Pansy looked at him with suddenly serious eyes. "Of course, Draco," she said; and he felt thankful and relieved that she did not ask any questions of the kind which he could not answer.

She gave him a peck on the cheek, and commanded Zabini, "Let's go."

Draco slid through the half-open door into the bathroom.

---

He watched his face in the mirror, trying to force himself into calm; to Occlude his mind as he had been taught by Aunt Bellatrix those several months ago, when he had been foolish enough to think that he was equal to the task assigned to him.

Later that day, after the lessons were over, he would slip out, and go to another bathroom, the dark bathroom which was the opening to the Chamber of Secrets; and he would talk to _her_. He didn't know yet what he would talk about; so, perhaps it would be she who would talk; but talk they would, because talk to her he must, he simply _must_. He hadn't met her since before Christmas, when he had been so sure that he had finally come across a failsafe plan for disposing of Dumbledore.

Of course, he hadn't taken Slughorn into consideration.

Rosmerta did inform him almost immediately that she had sold the... enhanced bottle of her finest oak-matured mead of which Dumbledore was so fond; but she did not say to whom. It was only after Christmas passed, and nothing happened, that Draco though to ask her the question – and received the answer.

Instead of presenting the bottle to Dumbledore, the old glutton must have retained it for his own use; that meant that once again, his plans had been foiled; and that he was back to repairing the Cabinet.

And, of course, there was no way he could take the bottle from Slughorn without attracting attention to himself. Ah, well; after today's lesson, he felt that he would almost be relieved when the Potter-worshipping fool–

Let him mix his antidote to the poison – all the while keeping in mind Golpalott's Third Law, of course! That; or search for a bezoar.

The only vaguely amusing outcome of the lesson was that Granger, apparently, had also resented Potter the undeserved praise he had garnered from Slughorn. Between that and her recent estrangement from the Weasel, something was clearly rotten in the state of Gryffindor–

He blinked. "What are _you_ doing _here_?" he asked, mustering as carefully neutral a tone as possible. Reflected in the mirror, Myrtle was hovering directly behind him, glaring at him like a Basilisk through her thick, round glasses.

---

Draco turned around and repeated, "Myrtle, what are you doing here?"

_As if he did not know_, she thought resentfully. Aloud, she said: "What am I _doing_ here? I came to see you! And I _did_ see you. With _her_," she finished in an accusatory tone. It smarted. Again he had promised to come, and again he had not; and now, she knew why.

He probably wouldn't have come again, wouldn't have come again _at all_–

The boy lowered his head and slowly raked his hand through his sleek blond hair, upsetting the careful arrangement completely. "Pansy?" he asked eventually, in a tired, worn-out voice.

Myrtle blinked; she had not been expecting such an easy victory. "Yes, _her_. That pug-faced–"

The cold voice cut through the air like a knife. "I would be grateful if you obliged me by refraining from speaking of my girlfriend in such derogatory terms."

Myrtle could not decide if she wanted to scream or cry; in the end, she settled for something in between. "Your _girlfriend_?!"

Draco winced. "Shh. Someone might hear."

"Why, of course they might! That's why I'm screaming!"

A pained look crossed the boy's face. "I really don't want to have to use a Silencing Charm," he said, and then added weakly, "–_please_?"

Myrtle studied the boy for a moment in silence.

This was the first time she had seen Draco clearly– Well, no: this was the first time she had seen him _at all_ in quite some time; but the previous time they had met, it had been dark, so she hadn't seen him _clearly_ for an even _longer_ time–

In any case, there was no trace of the mask-like face which Draco had almost automatically assumed the first few times they had met, and this was a good thing; but it was almost the only good thing. Because apart from that, Draco's skin had become almost grey, and he had dark shadows under his eyes; between that and his pale hair and grey eyes, the poor thing was almost halfway to becoming a ghost himself.

"All right," she decided, lowering her voice, "Now, what was it about a girlfriend?"

---

Draco sighed. After the reprimand he had received from Snape before Christmas, he had taken good care to read forward his Defence textbook. As it turned out, ghosts _were_ in it, defined as 'the imprints of departed souls'. Currently, he was about to discuss his girlfriend with an imprint of a departed soul. It did not sound too promising.

Of course, he was also about to discuss Pansy with Myrtle.

That didn't sound very promising, either.

"Pansy and I..." he began hesitantly, "We have been together for some two years now–"

"_Two years_?!" the ghost screamed out, instantly forgetting her promise; Draco felt himself wince again. "Two... years...?" she repeated much more quietly, apparently remembering the promise again.

There was a moment of silence on both sides as Myrtle considered the revelation and Draco considered Myrtle. She did not leave him; why didn't she leave him? She ought to have left him; she ought to have taken offence, and screamed, and cried, and floated to another bathroom, instead of simply hovering there, biting her lip, considering...

"B-but she can't be a very good girlfriend, can she?" Myrtle asked at last, half-triumphantly, half-pleadingly; and he felt even worse, "She can't be a very good girlfriend; otherwise you wouldn't have come to _me_."

"She _is_ a very good girlfriend," Draco replied resignedly, and the instant look of betrayal on Myrtle's face immediately made him regret his words; but he did not have the strength, he simply did not have the strength to maintain yet another act in his life; not any longer, not now. He _was_ cunning; he _was_ ambitious; he _was_ very good at Occlumency; but right now, he only wanted a bit of truth and sincerity in his life.

Of course, the truth would destroy what an act would maintain.

(_It is an act that is crucial to success, Draco!_)

---

Myrtle was not, by her own admittance, the most patient of creatures. She simply did not see any reason to be: no one had ever been patient with her, so she reciprocated in kind. With Draco, she felt, she had been exceptionally tolerant. She had endured him calling her a Mudblood; she had endured his obnoxiousness and his taunts and his long absences and that vague feeling that all too often, he did not pay her enough attention, the attention that she deserved. This, however – this was the last nail to the coffin of their friendship; if friendship it could have ever been called. She _would_ leave him here; let this girlfriend of his comfort him!

Myrtle, however, was also a Ravenclaw – or, at least, had been a Ravenclaw in life. And so, she was curious; curious, indeed. She wanted to _know_; even if the knowledge would hurt, in the end. She had already endured much, in life and in death, after all; and yet, she still survived! She _could_ endure one betrayal more–

"Then – why?" she asked, not caring especially to hide her resentment. "Why were you crying in the bathroom, instead of crying in your _girlfriend's_ _lap_? Can't let her see _her_ crying, can you? Can't let _her_ see that you're less of a boy than–"

"She must not know," Draco interrupted, speaking in that cold, calm drawl of his that she so detested. He slid down under the sink and sat on the floor, hiding his face in his hands. "She must not know," he repeated.

He looked up to Myrtle, and started to speak rapidly, "Do you remember the first time we met? When we talked about those people who–" He interrupted, and, after a moment, fluidly resumed, "bully me? If I tell her anything, they might start bullying her, too. They might hurt her."

"And, of course, it is _impossible_ to hurt a _ghost_," she said, mustering as much sarcasm as she could. _That_ memory of Nearly Headless Nick, motionless and opaque, was extremely vivid in her mind.

Draco cast her another pained look. "No. It's _not_ that," he said, squirming under the judgmental gaze of the one-ghost tribunal. "It's just..."

---

"...It's just that no one knows that we know each other," he said, and Myrtle's gaze suddenly softened for a moment. "Unless you told someone..."

"I did not!" Myrtle exclaimed in self-righteous indignation. She floated down to him, and sat next to him on the floor. "I did not. I _promised_."

Draco took this as a peace offering. "Then if I did not tell anyone, and you did not tell anyone, we should be safe," he said. "For the moment, at least," he added darkly.

Of course, his traitorous mind insinuated, nothing of this would matter the slightest in the long term if he did not manage to repair the Cabinet. If he did not manage to repair the Cabinet, then Father would die... and the Malfoy standing would be forfeit...

..._and he would kill me_.

It was not perhaps a particularly unexpected thought. Draco had known, intellectually, that the Dark Lord was in the habit of destroying those that stood in his way, or those that dared betray him; or those that he simply found of no use to him. But it was one thing to _know_ it all, and a completely different one to be sitting on the floor of a bathroom next to the ghost of a girl who might well have been the Dark Lord's first victim, and knowing that it was very likely that soon, _he_ would himself be counted among those failures–

The tears started to flow of their own accord.


	6. After the Birthday

**After the Birthday**

"Draco? What is it?"

(The Weasel had gone and had nearly gotten himself killed. Saint Potter had saved him – and had been probably lavishly heaped praise upon in return; and _the Weasel had gone and had nearly gotten himself killed_.)

"Draco? Draco, _talk_ to me!"

(Those two mutinying; didn't they understand why he couldn't tell them anything?! It was for their own good... to keep them safe... He had done everything he could to keep everyone safe... And _the Weasel had gone and had nearly gotten himself killed_.)

"Draco? Tell me what happened!"

(That Bell girl, she would be out of St. Mungo's soon, Mother checked it; and what was he supposed to do, anyway? The Dark Lord would kill Father; would kill Mother; would kill _him_... and _the Weasel had gone and had nearly gotten himself killed_.)

"Draco! It's me! Myrtle! Please, talk to me..."

(The Weasel would be dead soon anyway, if he continued to follow Potter; the Dark Lord would simply kill him while he killed Potter... And _I have almost killed the Weasel_.)

"Draco?"


	7. Lunchtime Hour

**Lunchtime Hour**

The three weeks which had passed since the Weasel had brushed with death, Draco had spent in a constant mill of lessons, homework and trips to the Room of Requirement. He had slowly started to become mildly optimistic about repairing the Cabinet again; through trial and error, he had proceeded, slowly but surely, with the laying of the intricate webbing of spells which would serve to create the passage into Hogwarts.

(Of course, that only meant that he was slowly approaching the point from which he had started in September. Still, he was progressing, and this was the important part; and as his knowledge of the Cabinet spell was now much more thorough than it had been before, the chances that he should commit another critical mistake, like back in October, were decidedly smaller.

The only thing which spoiled his satisfaction with the steady, methodical work was a small, nagging feeling at the back of his mind. It was as if he _were_ forgetting something, neglecting something – something which would, in the end, prove critical to success. He had not ignored that feeling, irrational as it was; however, he had checked, and double-checked, and triple-checked, each and every spell-thread he laid – as there _wasn't_ anything he was forgetting. The peculiar sensation remained just that: a sensation.)

The Weasel was up and about again, and that might be even, perhaps, a good thing; because, after all, there had been no investigation into the whole affair _again_. This came as a relief, of course, although, oddly enough, combined with a vague sort of indignation: Dumbledore really did not care for the lives of his students, did he? Apparently, not even when these students were Potter's lackeys, his Gryffindor darlings...

The man almost made it too easy to hate him. His life in exchange for Mother's, and Father's, and Draco's own – it was definitely more than a fair trade.

(Potter... Potter would never be in his place. That sanctimonious, sycophantic brat would never have to bargain for anything; never, ever have to learn to compromise; hopefully, it would be his thick-headed arrogance that the Dark Lord would exploit to trap him–)

Potter had attempted to enter the Room of Requirement today.

Actually, it had been a mildly amusing experience.

---

He made sure that Potter had bored himself of talking to an empty wall before leaving the Room, of course; he really had more important, and interesting, things to do than being attacked and possibly getting into detention right now. Therefore, it was only about the lunchtime hour that he left the Room of Requirement.

Pansy and the others would be still in Hogsmeade; she had mentioned to him that she would like to eat lunch there. There was Goyle, of course – and, yes, the story of Saint Potter and the Empty Wall would be one he might enjoy, meagre recompense for the many and lengthy travails he had to endure for Draco's sake though it was.

(Bless him, his kind heart and his generous soul: he might have been mutinying against his disguise, but remained a good friend and level-headed enough to perform his designate role.)

This did not mean, however, that he might not step into a bathroom on the way to the Slytherin dungeons.

---

"Hello, Myrtle."

The amused voice was like a breath of fresh air in the stuffy, maudlin atmosphere of the bathroom; Myrtle, perched at the edge of a sink, reduced the intensity of her crying to a sob.

"Hello, Draco," she said, sniffing her nose, "I see he didn't hurt you."

"No, he was just standing there, saying idiotic–" He stopped as he realised how perfectly concerted, and how perfectly unreasonable, the question and the answer had been; he had never mentioned Potter's recent stalking inclinations to Myrtle; she must have meant... "Hold on. You aren't talking about Potter–"

Myrtle was watching him through wide-open eyes, which suddenly made him suspicious. "–are you?" he finished weakly.

Myrtle blinked once, twice, thrice; and then, true to her moniker, burst into tears. "I didn't tell him anything. I really _didn't_!"

Draco felt his good humour dissipate instantly. "Myrtle?"

"I didn't, I didn't, I _didn't_!"

With her incessant wailing, he thought, she resembled a house elf. He sighed internally and, mustering all the patience that still remained within the sea of irritation, said:

"Myrtle? I believe you."

Myrtle glared at him askance. "You do?"

He shrugged and smiled; although, truth be told, he really didn't feel like smiling at the moment. "Well, you promised, didn't you?" he said, as cheerfully as he dared without making himself look like a fool even to himself, "And so, you wouldn't tell, would you?" _Would you?_

"I didn't," Myrtle repeated through the sobs.

"All right," he said, though he did not really feel all right; after all, Potter _had_ found the hideout in the Room of Requirement, even if he hadn't managed to enter it, "Now that that's settled, what _did_ you tell him?"

"O-only that I was meeting a boy," Myrtle wailed on, "I d-didn't tell him your name! I–"

Draco decided that he believed her.

It was not the easiest decision, but there it was, as simple as _Wingardium Leviosa_:

Whatever magic Potter had used to discover the identity of his hideout in the Room of Requirement, it had nothing to do with Moaning Myrtle.

---

(Of course, that left the question of just what kind of magic Potter _had_ used. For now, that was perhaps rather an academic interest – because whatever it had been, the Chosen Brat _hadn't_ managed to enter the Room of Requirement, but had been reduced to impotently begging the Room to let him in; a most agreeable situation, as far as the Room's occupant had been concerned.

Still, past forays into the enemy arsenal had definitely brought wholesome results; and what with the Weasel twins' Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder–)

---

"–_didn't_!

"Stop crying, Myrtle! I _told_ you I believed you."

Myrtle, indeed, stopped crying for a moment – as if she, too, were amazed by the outrageousness of Draco's demand. Then, she resumed, with an even greater force.

"Myrtle..."

And then, suddenly, Draco felt an urge to laugh.

"We really _are_ a pair, aren't we?" he said, leaning against the sink; next to him, Myrtle's sobs took on a definitely offended quality. "While we're not screaming at each other, we're crying at one another. Have we ever had a normal conversation yet?"

(Of course they had; his mind readily supplied examples. There was the time when– And the time when– And when had the times become so _many_?)

"Myrtle," he said, looking at the ghost sitting next to him on the sink, "What is it?"

From the deluge of muffled sobs, he fished out a mumbled, "...made fun of me..."

"Who? Potter?"

Another series of sobs, "...awful redhead boy..."

Oh. It was nice, he supposed, to see that, once up, the Weasel was down to his usual level of sterling humour.

"But, Myrtle," he reasoned, "he's... irrelevant."

Irrelevant: the way Potter was irrelevant; the way Quidditch was irrelevant; the way the school itself, homework and House points and all that was irrelevant. Potter played Quidditch, and did not see that Quidditch was irrelevant; and very well, let him play his Quidditch for as long as possible; let him play his Quidditch when the Dark Lord came for him. Potter had dropped all pretence of hexing people for any other reason than satisfying his sadistic tendencies; and very well, let him do so; let him be still devoted to hexing people on Hogwarts' corridors when the Dark Lord came for him.

(Although this last mantra, he _had_ nearly broken when Potter had attacked Crabbe.)

Let Potter stand for hours in front of the Room of Requirement if he so desired; of course, Potter, Dumbledore's pet, possessed of an Invisibility Cloak, apt to hex random people simply because he felt like it, was not to be underestimated–

Still, he was... irrelevant.

(Irrelevant to _what_? Now _that_ was a question. But he _was_.)

And so, in a way, was the Weasel.

(At least, to Myrtle; to Myrtle, not to him. _He_ still remembered–)

Myrtle had stopped crying and was looking at him curiously.

"He's not important, Myrtle," he argued, "You simply don't have to care for him, or his tasteless humour, or–"

Suddenly, he broke off. For a moment, unbelievably enough, he had forgotten that he was not speaking to a girl, two years younger than himself, but to the ghost of a girl, two years younger than himself. And that while the girl might have listened to his advice, the ghost of the girl definitely would not; because a ghost was only an imprint, ghosts could not learn, could not change; could not evolve.

"Next time, try not to let yourself be upset by him; if you even can, that is... Or, perhaps," he smirked, "Why don't you haunt him for a bit in revenge?"

This, to his hidden relief, was met with a round of giggling.

---

Soon, Draco excused himself and went away to spend a happy evening with his friends.

(As in the end it turned out, the last happy evening in quite a long time.)


	8. Halfway through April

**Halfway through April.**

It was as if a Dementor had followed Draco into the bathroom, Myrtle thought.

A Dementor: she had once heard the word mentioned in her presence when she had been alive; given to a Ravenclaw's thirst for knowledge, she had sought its meaning in the library. And when she had found it, she had instantly regretted her curiosity.

A Dementor: grey, slimy, scabrous and cold; so _cold_. With its very presence draining the rests of Draco's happiness and peace of mind, and leaving behind only the pain and anguish in which a Dementor is; for the Dementor is never happy, never satisfied. It only _is_.

Myrtle fluttered about, chattering nonsensically, trying to ward the Dementor off, trying to protect Draco; but, in the end, all her efforts were useless. The Dementor was still there; not in the least because it had never been there.

---

_"I can't do it!" _

He couldn't do it.

He couldn't do it: not because he did not want to, because, of course, he did, he had to; but because he physically _couldn't_ _do_ _it_. There was something missing, something constantly missing, and whatever he tried, the Cabinet simply wouldn't mend; spells which he knew should work, must work, all failed to settle. The small, nagging sensation which had accompanied him since the Weasel's near-death had bloomed into a full-scale feeling of wrongness, of lack, of deficiency–

He couldn't do it.

He commanded the Room to supply him everything he needed; and, of course, the magic binding the Room to give him whatever he required _did_ give him all that he required. The only conclusion was that it was _he_ who was deficient, lacking in skill, lacking in acumen, not good enough, never good enough; he was never good enough, was he? He was never good enough, always coming in second, always second to– to that Mudblood; even now, he was only using her ideas, the coin and the poison which had almost killed the Weasel, he wasn't capable of doing anything well on his own, Father was right, and Father was now in Azkaban, and Father would die, and Mother would die, and he would die, because he thought that he would be good enough but of course he wasn't good enough and Mother had known this all along and everyone had known this all along and the Dark Lord had known this all along and the Dark Lord would kill him

---

A Dementor is despair physically manifest; but despair need not necessarily be physically manifest.


	9. Sectumsempra

**Sectumsempra**

The second-to-last time they had met, in Myrtle's own bathroom, Draco had been amused – happy, even; he had joked – just a bit, but he had; and he had comforted Myrtle, and they had spoken, and it had been even, perhaps, a somewhat pleasant moment.

The last time they had met, she had found him by chance when he was crying in the boys' bathroom.

Well, perhaps not so much by chance. This was the same bathroom where they had met just after the New Year; she had taken to visiting it occasionally during the day... several times during a day.

Then, Draco had been in tatters; and it had been the time for her to comfort him. She had done her best, in her opinion; when he had told her that he was hopeless and that he wasn't good enough, she had told him that he wasn't and that he was. When he had told her that he couldn't do whatever it was that those– those _bullies_ were making him do, she had told him that he certainly could, and would, because he was clever and skilled and resilient and strong. When, at last, he had told her that they would kill him, she had refrained from telling him that, if they did, he would be still welcome in her bathroom.

Even though he would.

This time they had met, Draco _had_ almost been killed.

Killed.

Murdered.

_Murdered_.

In a _bathroom_.

---

"_Go_," said the scary professor, who had saved Draco's life; and Myrtle went.

---

Many people, Myrtle thought darkly, would say that she would be a hilarious excuse for an avenging angel: a pimply, fat, ugly avenging angel who took altogether too much enjoyment from her task.

Because–

To be able to scream out that, half a century after she had died, _another_ student had been attacked and nearly killed in a bathroom in this wretch of a school; to know the near-murderer's name, and to be able to scream it out, as she could not do for herself; to be able to scream this _all_ out, at top voice and in each and every bathroom of the school–

(and to know that the student, who was Draco, who was her friend, was safe; she had heard that scary man say that he was, and the scary man would be right, wouldn't he? _Wouldn't_ he?)

–how could this _not_ be enjoyable?

(They _would_ tell Draco's mother, wouldn't they? He was a pureblood, or at least she thought he was, after that time he– and, anyway, he had never denied it. So, he was a pureblood, or a half-blood; so, perhaps, they _would_ tell his mother.)

And so, the pimply, fat, ugly avenging angel set out to her self-appointed task.

With evident enjoyment.

---

In the first bathroom she visited there were several boys, fourth or fifth-years by appearance, discussing Quidditch.

"...and so, we won by three hundred and twenty to sixty," one boy concluded. "Brilliant game, that."

"Yeah, except that now, Potter will have his main team back," another boy countered. "So we'll–"

"Harry Potter will have to be glad if he doesn't get expelled!" Myrtle interrupted heatedly, "He almost killed someone, just a moment ago–"

The Ravenclaw stopped talking; the eyes of all turned on Myrtle. It was a very pleasant experience, she discovered.

"I was in the bathroom when it all happened," she said, feeling that such audience demanded for more detail. "There was blood everywhere. _Everywhere_," she finished gleefully.

The boys exchanged knowing looks.

"If Potter is not on the team..." one started.

"...if your team beats Gryffindor by more than a hundred points..." continued another.

"Then they will come third, behind us!" finished a third.

Myrtle blinked, and went in search of another bathroom.

---

In the second bathroom she visited, there were only two rather grown-up girls. One was sobbing, which immediately caused Myrtle's heart to go to her in sympathy; the tears were gradually dissolving the thick layer of makeup on the girl's face. The other girl – a very pretty girl whom, on contrary, Myrtle immediately detested – was trying to comfort her.

Myrtle was just about to leave this bathroom when the pretty girl looked at her and said, "What are you looking at, Moaning Myrtle? Leave us alone!"

This made Myrtle angry. She was bearing important news, after all.

"Do you know that Harry Potter has just almost killed someone?" she asked haughtily.

The crying girl muttered something which sounded suspiciously like, "...it wouldn't surprise me, the freak..."

The pretty girl, on her part, paled. "Killed someone?" she asked. "Whom?"

This actually started Myrtle a bit. She hadn't thought about how to tell this part.

"Tall, pale boy with a pointy face?" she hazarded.

The pretty girl blinked. "Malfoy? So it has come to this at last..." she said cryptically.

Myrtle didn't understand her, and so, immediately resented her even more; to bring the focus of the conversation back to herself, she hurried with the details.

"He cut him open with a spell...drew blood, _lots_ and _lots_ of it. The boy would have bled to death, except that _I_ called for help," she finished.

The pretty girl said something, but Myrtle wasn't listening to her; a new thought was filling her mind as she dove back into the pipes which would take her to the next bathroom:

In a way, she, too, had saved Draco's life today.

---

In the third bathroom she visited, there was a group of really tiny boys, first- or at most second-years. She told them hurriedly in passing: "Do you know that Harry Potter has just almost killed Draco Malfoy?"

The first name, she noticed curiously, drew a gasp of recognition from about half of the boys in the bathroom; the second one drew a very similar gasp from the second half. As she left the bathroom, the atmosphere inside was distinctly tenser; in fact, the two groups seemed on the verge of following their heroes into battle.

When she entered the fourth bathroom, she halted abruptly.

_She_ was there.

The haughty, pug-faced monstrosity that Draco had called his _girlfriend_.

He had then diverted the conversation very skilfully, so skilfully that Myrtle hadn't even realised that they hadn't really finished talking about...Pansy; yes, her name was Pansy. And she was Draco's _girlfriend_.

This, of course, made Myrtle hate her on sight; she hated her even more than she hated the pretty girl from two bathrooms ago. It was a pity, really, that, being Draco's girlfriend, she ought to know what had happened to him. If Myrtle had a choice, she wouldn't tell the girl anything.

Still, this didn't mean that she couldn't have some fun doing so.

---

"Hey, you! Yes, _you_, I'm talking to _you_," Myrtle called out, and the pug– _Pansy_ turned around, clearly surprised that the ghost was talking to her. "You're the girl of that ferret-faced boy, aren't you? Malfoy?"

"And if I were, what business would be that of yours, ghost?" Pansy asked suspiciously.

Myrtle shrugged. "Weeeell," she started, savouring the taste of the moment, "only that he's just been attacked, and nearly died. You see," she continued, now, in change, treasuring the look on Pansy's face, "Harry Potter–"

Pansy gave out a small cry.

"–cut him open. Nearly disembowelled him. Eviscerated him. Filleted him like a fish. Gutted him like an animal–"

Pansy now had a look in her eyes as though she were an animal about to be gutted herself; and, to her own dismay, Myrtle felt her non-existent heart twinge in compassion for the girl.

"But he's all right now," she said. "He's in the hospital wing."

She watched in silence as the girl ran out of the bathroom, probably cursing the fact that one could not Apparate in Hogwarts. She would not herself go to visit Draco; he probably wouldn't want it, given that their meetings were to be secret and all–

Then, she shrugged and smiled. There were still many bathrooms to visit; much fun to be had–


	10. The End of Things

**The End of Things**

Outside, it is the warm night of the early summer, and Albus Dumbledore has left Hogwarts.

Draco Malfoy tastes the exquisite air of expectation; of anticipation; of the coming moment – the moment which, he knows, will be one of the defining moments of his life: tonight, he will kill Albus Dumbledore and thus prove his loyalty to the Dark Lord.

He now knows why it took him so long to arrive at this moment. It was not the want of academic prowess that held him for months; it was the want of conviction.

He didn't want to kill Albus Dumbledore before.

Even knowing who his target was; even knowing what the price of failure was; even knowing what the reward for victory was – he still, somehow, against all logic, did not want to kill Albus Dumbledore. He hid this weakness deep within his mind, so that even he would not become aware of it.

(Draco is a very good Occlumens, after all.)

But even though he wasn't aware of it, the Room of Requirement was; and the Room supplies what one requires, not what one openly professes to require.

All that is behind him now, thankfully; with a single spell, Potter removed this foolish inhibition, this... subconscious denial of his aspirations; with a single spell, he effected that which all the Dark Lord's threats and promises would not effect. For that, Draco supposes, he should be grateful to the scar-faced git.

(He is not: the dittany did not work flawlessly.)

---

And so, Draco Malfoy walks the corridors of Hogwarts from the Slytherin dungeon up to the seventh floor where the Room of Requirement is; and somewhere halfway between the two, there is a bathroom.

There is only a moment's hesitation before he enters the bathroom. He will not be here long.

---

It is dark inside the bathroom; there are some candles, but they only give off a weak, dim light. But Draco does not need to cast _Lumos_; he knows his way around the dark bathroom well enough. (Oddly enough, this does not come as a surprise.)

He also knows the habits of the bathroom's inhabitant well enough that he would know where to search for her even if he did not hear the muffled sobs that come from the last cubicle.

Moaning Myrtle is sitting on top of the toilet tank, unmindful to all but her own misery; at least, until she sees him. Then, she stops crying and smiles widely.

"Hello, Draco," she says cheerfully.

Draco does not reply; and Myrtle continues her chatter. "I'm so happy to see you!" she says, "I'm so happy that you are well! I've told them what happened, I've told them _all_!"

She looks proud of herself; proud, and a bit expectant, as if she awaited praise for her deed; Draco only replies noncommittally, "So I've heard."

Yes, he heard what she had done: but what does it matter? What does it simply _matter_? This is the here and now, and tonight, he will kill Albus Dumbledore.

Myrtle's face tenses slightly – this is clearly not the kind of answer she expected – and she replies anxiously, "I have done the right thing, haven't I? You're not angry, aren't you?" She begs him to reply with her wide-open eyes behind her thick, round glasses.

Draco studies the ghost coolly for a second. "No, I'm not," he says, because he isn't, because it all simply doesn't matter, all that is the part of the life that he leaves behind tonight; and then, just as Myrtle's face relaxes into a shy smile again, he picks up, flawlessly, smoothly, cruelly, "I'm not entirely sure if I could be angry with you, even if I wanted," he says; the lazy, languid drawl comes to his call easily. "You're so much... less than I am, after all," he says.

Myrtle blinks. "Less than you?" she asks, "What do you mean, Draco?"

For a second, his mind is blank; but then, the proper words return to him, just as the proper voice has come to him. "Well," he drawls nonchalantly, "to begin with, you're a ghost. A _Mudblood's_ ghost. That's practically a nonperson already, isn't it?"

Myrtle's eyes become even larger behind the thick lenses of her glasses; Draco continues, "And that's not even to speak of your utterly repulsive excuse of a personality. And your equally nauseating looks–"

Myrtle interrupts, laughing nervously, "This is a joke, Draco, isn't it? You're joking, aren't you? Aren't you?" By the time she reaches the end, she is pleading.

"_You_ are a joke, ghost," Draco replies, "A _pathetic_ joke."

Myrtle's face is now a curious mix of disbelief and betrayal; but she tries again:

"But...We are friends, aren't we?"

"_Friends_?" Draco nearly hisses out; to Myrtle, it sounds almost like Parseltongue–

But Draco calms down immediately; and, with a cruel grimace around his mouth, he repeats, "_Friends_? We have _never_ been friends, _ghost_. I had some use for you, that's true, but if you were pathetic enough to mistake it for friendship, that's your problem. I know who my friends are, and _you_ aren't one of them. Why would _I_ ever need a pathetic Mudblood ghost for a _friend_?"

His voice is cold and contemptuous, and Myrtle is dumbfounded as she looks into the pale, grey eyes, and does not find the slightest trace of feeling in them, and does not understand what she has done wrong, and does not comprehend why Draco treats her this way, why he discards her all of a sudden, like a snake discards its used skin–

Then, as he turns around and walks away, it is for a moment as though Myrtle would remember other words, words spoken in this selfsame bathroom, about how some people and some words are simply unimportant, irrelevant to the truth, to life, and how she should not let them upset her–

But, in the end, she remains true to her moniker – true to her _self_; and, as Draco Malfoy closes the bathroom door behind himself and walks off to meet his destiny, he is followed from within the bathroom by the ghost's sobs; and then, by the ghost's cry.

_Fin._


End file.
